SEIZE THE INITIATIVE
When people recall their personal-best leadership experiences, they always think about some kind of challenge. Why? Because personal and business hardships have a way of making people come face-to- face with who they really are and what they’re capable of becoming. They test people, and they require inventive ways of dealing with new situations. They tend to bring out the best in people. When times are stable and secure, however, people are not severely tested. They may perform well, get promoted, and even achieve fame and fortune. But certainty and routine breed complacency.
Meeting new challenges always requires things to be different than they currently are. You can’t respond with the same old solutions. You have to change the status quo. And that’s exactly what
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G E people did in their personal-best leadership experiences. They met
challenge with change. The interesting thing about this is that we didn’t ask people to
tell us about change. They could discuss any leadership experience they chose—past or present, unofficial or official; in any functional area; in any community, voluntary, religious, health care, educa- tional, public sector, or private sector organization. But what people chose to discuss were the changes they made in response to the chal- lenges they faced. Their electing to talk about times of change underscores the fact that leadership demands altering the business- as-usual environment. There is a clear connection between challenge and change.
Rosabeth Moss Kanter, a Harvard Business School professor, investigated the human resource practices and organization designs of innovation-producing organizations, seeking to learn what fos- tered and what hindered innovation in corporations. Our study and Rosabeth’s were done independently of each other, in different regions and periods in time, and with different purposes. We were studying leadership; Rosabeth was studying innovation. Yet we arrived at similar conclusions: leadership is inextricably connected with the process of innovation, of bringing new ideas, methods, or solutions into use. To Rosabeth, innovation means change, and “change requires leadership . . . a ‘prime mover’ to push for imple- mentation of strategic decisions.”1 Her cases and ours are evidence of that.
The study of leadership is the study of how men and women guide others through adversity, uncertainty, hardship, disruption, transformation, transition, recovery, new beginnings, and other sig- nificant challenges. It’s the study of people who triumph against overwhelming odds, who take initiative when there is inertia, who confront the established order, who mobilize people and institutions
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in the face of strong resistance. It’s also the study of how men and women, in times of constancy and complacency, actively seek to disturb the status quo and awaken others to new possibilities. Leader- ship, challenge, and seizing the initiative are inextricably linked. Humdrum situations simply aren’t associated with award-winning performances.
That’s exactly the attitude that Arvind Mohan displayed when he was hired as a new manufacturing engineer at a high-technology firm just before a major industry downturn and two rounds of layoffs. Instead of being overwhelmed by this situation, he was determined “to take initiative instead of feeling helpless.” He under- stood that the company was trying to streamline its cost structure to mitigate the industry’s cyclical nature, and he had some ideas about how they could reduce the required lead time from customer order to delivery.
When he approached his manager, he found that her attention was more focused on dealing with current, and dire, problems. Refusing to be discouraged by this crisis, Arvind told her, “ ‘There is not much activity on the floor right now. Besides, you’ve always encouraged me to think out of the box. You’ve seen the preliminary numbers I’ve put together. How about I work with the production team and see what I can come up with?’ Intrigued with my initial analysis, she gave me the go-ahead.”
When Arvind explained that he had some ideas about how profits could be improved by increasing production throughput, the assembly line manager shot back, “Manufacturing is not the issue! We have long lead times because sales cannot get customers to order more frequently. You need to talk to sales.” Wanting to turn the manager’s cynical view into a positive outlook, Arvind said, “I agree. Why don’t we start, however, by looking at our production effi- ciency?” Intrigued by his proposal and by the opportunity to learn
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G E from what Arvind proposed, the manager gave the green light to
proceed. Arvind picked one of the smaller production lines to experi- ment with, simulated different production scenarios, and found that they could increase throughput by nearly 50 percent.
Buoyed by this success, Arvind convinced his manager to bring sales into the mix. When he broached the possibility of reducing the window time between customer order and delivery, their sales rep thundered: “The last time I pushed my accounts to order more frequently, they ended up going to another vendor. I can’t let that happen again.” Again, Arvind was not dissuaded. He suggested that they visit one of Toyota’s factories and learn about how they trend down on lead-time by sharing the resultant cost savings with their customers. Sales got excited about this possibility, and in the course of six months, they were able to convince all of their accounts to increase their order frequency.
This experience taught Arvind that “if you can think of ways to improve the process, you should take it.” This means you have to stop simply “going through the motions” when it comes to doing your job. It’s a lesson all leaders need to learn. Even if you’re on the right track, you’re likely to get run over if you just sit there. To do your best as a leader, you have to seize the initiative to change the way things are.